The Traitor Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickinson
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This book was a really interesting case study in leading the reader astray. The author does a phenomenal job of misdirection ensuring the audience bought into the main storyline in the second half of the book. After the twist happen, I certainly thought back on the book and realized I missed a number of clues leading up to the twist.

That aside, I loved this book. If there’s a book that you want to use to educate someone on the negative impacts of colonization, I think this is an excellent start. On the one hand it’ll challenge those people because of the complexity of the cultures that are being conquered and on the other hand because it talks openly of the tools colonizers use to dominate other cultures. In most fantasy series the only tool of colonization is military might. There’s some nuance in Malazan Book of the fallen in some cases, mostly Lether, but generally it’s military might.

In this book, that’s turned on it’s head and the characters openly discuss the best colonization tools for the culture they are working to conquer. As an American who has recently been to Hawai’i, where I learned a great deal about the history and conquest of those islands, it was painfully obvious these books are based on conquest like the US conquest and colonization of Hawai’i.

I recommend this book for anyone that wants a unique way to talk about colonization with a fantastic set of characters. Including POC, LGBTQ, and nontraditional relationships.

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